Fishermen move a fishing boat to higher ground ahead of tropical storm Mekkhala in central city of Danang, Vietnam Monday, Sept. 29, 2008. The storm lammed into central Vietnam Tuesday, knocking down trees, electricity poles and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people in high risk areas, officials said. (AP Photo/Vietnam News Agency)

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — The bodies of two children and three fishermen were recovered in central Vietnam, raising the death toll from Tropical Storm Mekkhala to eight with eight others still missing and feared dead, disaster officials said Thursday.

The bodies of the 5-year-old girl and 3-year-old boy were found Wednesday after they were washed away from their house in Ha Tinh province, disaster official Nguyen Khoa Thanh said. Rescuers also recovered the bodies of three fishermen in Quang Tri and Quang Binh provinces, where four others remained missing after the storm sank their boats, provincial officials said.

Four people remained unaccounted for in Thanh Hoa province, disaster official Do Minh Chinh said.

Mekkhala slammed into Vietnam’s central coast Tuesday morning before moving to Laos later the same day.

The storm, packing winds of 55 mph, destroyed or blew the roofs off of hundreds of houses and sank dozens of boats. It also triggered heavy rains across the region.

Mekkhala hit as northern Vietnam was still recovering from Typhoon Hagupit, which struck last Thursday. Floods triggered by the typhoon killed 41 people and caused an estimated $65 million in damage.

Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai urged the Foreign Ministry to contact countries in the region to allow Vietnamese fishermen in the storm’s path to take shelter, the national committee on floods and storms control said.

A 9-year-old girl and her 7-year-old brother were swept away while crossing a stream in Quang Binh province, said disaster official Nguyen Ngoc Dien. Three other people were missing elsewhere in the province, he said.

In neighboring Ha Tinh province, a man died when he was blown off the roof of his home while trying to reinforce it during the storm. Two teenagers in the province were missing after being swept away while crossing a stream, said disaster official Le Dinh Son.

In Quang Tri province, five people were reported missing.

The storm arrived as people in northern Vietnam were still cleaning up following Typhoon Hagupit, which killed 41 people last week and caused damage estimated at US$65 million.

Mekkhala, packing winds of 55 miles per hour (88 kilometers per hour), blew tin roofs off houses in Quang Binh province, Dien said, adding that power blackouts were reported in the provincial capital Dong Hoi.

Tran Minh Ky, vice governor of Ha Tinh province, said 10,000 people in coastal villages had earlier been evacuated. However, some began returning to their homes Tuesday afternoon as the storm moved into Laos and rains stopped, said Son.

Rescue workers in northern Son La province are still struggling to reach isolated villages devastated by floods triggered by Typhoon Hagupit.

Vietnam is prone to floods and storms that kill hundreds of people each year.

Hagupit killed 17 people and left six missing in the Guangxi region of southern China last week, the official Xinhua News Agency reported in a story posted Tuesday. Nearly 700,000 people there were evacuated after heavy rains and flooding destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of homes.

Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) — Vietnam started evacuating coastal areas and ordered local authorities to prepare for Tropical Storm Mekkhala, which strengthened from a depression overnight and is forecast to make landfall today.

Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai sent an urgent directive to ministries, provincial authorities and national rescue and relief teams to prepare for the storm. Evacuations were ordered in low-lying coastal areas.

The country’s weather office forecast heavy rains and warned of flooding and landslides, the government said.

Mekkhala’s maximum sustained winds were at 102 kilometers (64 miles) per hour, with gusts to 130 kph, at 7 a.m. when it was located about 58 kilometers east of Dong Hoi. Mekkhala was moving west-northwest at 24 kph.

Mekkhala is the 20th storm of the northwest Pacific cyclone season and means the angel of thunder in Thai, according to the Hong Kong Observatory, which lists cyclone names in use in the Pacific.

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — The death toll from floods triggered by Typhoon Hagupit rose to 41 as rescue workers began to reach isolated villages devastated by a storm that has caused at least $65 million in damage, officials said Monday.

At least five people were still missing and feared dead in the storm, which washed away more than 1,000 houses and damaged 10,000 more, according to Vietnam’s committee on floods and storm control.

The storm has caused at least $65 million in damages, the committee said Monday.

In the worst-hit province of Son La, two more bodies were found Sunday, bringing the toll there to 16. Three people were still missing, said provincial disaster official Trinh Ngoc Bao.

Some areas are inaccessible by cars or trucks, complicating rescue efforts, he said.

“Rescue workers have to walk to stranded areas to get aid to people,” Bao said. “In many villages people have had no food for several days.”

The torrential downpours have eased and floodwaters have receded in most areas. On Sunday, Vietnamese television broadcast images of villagers returning to survey the damage, cleaning mud and debris from their property.

The storm slammed into northern Vietnam on Thursday after killing 10 people in China.

HANOI (Reuters) – Flash floods and landslides have killed 50 people in Vietnam and Thailand, swept away thousands of homes and inundated farmland, official reports said on Sunday.

In Vietnam, the death toll from typhoon Hagupit, which struck the Philippines and China earlier in the week, has jumped to 32 with another five people missing.

Thousands of homes were either washed away or destroyed by heavy rains and landslides in northern Vietnam, the government’s storm and flood prevention committee said.

Hagupit, which means “lashing” in Filipino, killed at least eight people in the Philippines and three in China where it triggered a “once-in-a-century storm tide.”

Vietnamese soldiers were dispatched to evacuate thousands of people from areas vulnerable to more flash floods and landslides in the mountainous provinces of Son La, Lang Son and Bac Giang.

Heavy rains on Sunday could trigger more landslides in the mountainous north, and flooding along the Thai Binh river, the National Meteorology Center said.

The Red River near the capital Hanoi was expected to reach dangerously high levels on Sunday, rising to 8.6 meters (28 ft), the center said.

Vietnam’s main agriculture belt including the coffee-growing Central Highlands region and the Mekong Delta rice basket was not in the storm’s path.

In Thailand, the death toll from floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains has risen to 18, while nearly 190,000 people have been treated for water-related illnesses and injuries, the Health Ministry said.

It said there were no major outbreaks of disease since the heavy rains began more than two weeks ago, affecting some 800,000 people in the country of 63 million.

Some 500,000 acres of farmland, most of it rice paddy, has been inundated, affecting roughly 2 percent of the total paddy for the 2008-09 growing season, according the Agriculture Ministry data.

HANOI (AFP) — The death toll from floods in northern Vietnam triggered by Typhoon Hagupit has risen to at least 25 while four others are missing, disaster officials said Saturday.

The victims came from five different provinces, 10 of them from mountainous Son La, said an online report from the national flood and storm control department. State media had reported 16 dead on Friday.

Another three bodies have been recovered in Lang Son province which borders China, bringing the death toll there to seven, said Bui Thanh, a provincial disaster official.

“These people were swept away during floods,” he told AFP, adding that little rain had been reported since Saturday morning.

In Bac Giang province, two boys aged four and 10 and a mobile phone company technician were among the latest victims of the floods.

“The man, from Viettel company, fell into the strong currents while he was trying to prevent flood water from entering a telecom station,” said Bui Lien Son, deputy head of the province’s flood and storm office.

A total of 27 people have been reported injured. Thousands of houses were inundated or destroyed while more than 97,700 hectares (241,000 acres) of crops had been damaged since floods and heavy rains ravaged the region on Wednesday night.

State-run television VTV showed people in Bac Giang and Quang Ninh provinces taking refuge on the roofs of houses flooded to the eaves or on hills.

“This is the second time we were hit by floods in this province this year,” La Van Nam, a local resident in Bac Giang province told VTV. “We are in real difficulties as the floods damaged our rice crop,” he added.

According to Vietnam News Agency, several remote communes in Quang Ninh and Son La provinces were cut off. Disaster officials have warned of possible landslides in the mountainous regions, it said.

Nearly 5,300 soldiers have been mobilised for search and rescue operations and to help people recover in the aftermath of the floods, said the online report from Hanoi.

Vietnam suffers from frequent floods and storms, which claim hundreds of lives every year between July and November.